western leaders perspective on the white man's burden

Several of these graphics fromPuckcommented on Americas problems at home while accusing others of being barbarians. Notre site en Franais: mondialisation.ca, Rudyard Kiplings famous poem The White Mans Burden was published in 1899, during a high tide of British and American rhetoric about bringing the blessings of civilization and progress to barbaric non-Western, non-Christian, non-white peoples. Kiplings We may have burnt certain villages, destroyed considerable property and incidentally slaughtered a few thousand of their sons and brothers, husbands and fathers, etc., but what did they expect? 83-108 (2006). Source:William H. Walker Cartoon Collection, Princeton University Library. In the West, China was often characterized as befuddled and archaic under the rule of an inscrutable crone, the Empress Dowager. Get started today before this once in a lifetime opportunity expires. U.S. Philippines, Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico. A Native American reads a book upside down and a prospective Chinese pupil stands in the doorway. Each sign is topped by the word Wanted and the goods listed include trolley lines, electric lights, water-works, sewers, paving, asphalt roads, watches, clocks, wagons, carriages, trucks, 100,000 bridges, 500,000 engines, 2 million cars, 4 million rails, 100,000 RR stations, cotton goods, telegraph, telephone, stoves, lamps, petroleum, medicines, chemicals, disinfectants, 50 million reaping machines, 100 million plows, and 50 million sewing machines. The Laureate of Empire., Klein, Thoralf. This unit examines cartoons from the turn-of-the-century visual record that reference civilization and its nemesisbarbarism. Hawaii and Porto Rico are model female students. Case Study: The Boxer WarThe Boxer Uprising.Online Encyclopediaof Mass Violence(July 23, 2008). (DOI:10.1080/14664658.2011.559749), Twain, Mark. Beyond flat-out aggression and repression, the common thread that linked the imperialist powers, in Twains critique, was the hypocrisy of expansionist rhetoric about Civilization and Progress. (He itemized the virtues that supposedly animated this white mans burden as Love, Justice, Gentleness, Christianity, Protection of the Weak, Temperance, Law and Order, Liberty, Equality, Honorable Dealing, Mercy, and Education.) The February 1901 essay opens with the satirical observation that: Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who Sits in Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the whole; and there is money in it yet, if carefully workedbut not enough, in my judgement, to make any considerable risk advisable. The U.S. conquest of the Philippines, coupled with the multi-nation Boxer intervention in China, prompted Twain to become an outspoken critic of America plunging into what he denounced as the European Game of overseas expansion. The president of the First Philippine Republic, Emilio Aguinaldo, is portrayed as a barefoot savage, wild hair escaping from a dunce cap. Scorched earth tactics destroyed scores of villages. An exceptionally vivid cartoon version of Kiplings message titled The White Mans Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling) was published inJudgeon April 1, 1899. The regular army was dissolved after the war and the ironclad warships gradually fell into disrepair. Bickers, Robert A. and R. G. Tiedemann, editors (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). Source:Bibliothque nationale de France, British soldiers laugh at the spectacle of Boer prisoners of war being shocked by an electric fence. The human and financial cost of these extended conflicts was large. The phrase White Mans Burden caught on with many imperialists to justify the policy as noble. Contemporary wars in the Philippines and Transvaal (the Boer War) comprise the foreground of the Think It Over battlefield. The influx of cheap Western goods eroded generations-long trading patterns, while telegraph and railroad lines were constructed in violation of superstitions, eliciting deep resentment among Chinese. Vol 172 (February 1901). Additional images from the issue depict barbaric behavior by the multinational force that intervened in China during the Boxer Uprising. As the military governor until May 1900, Otis inflated Filipino atrocities and prevented journalists, Red Cross officials, and soldiers from reporting American atrocities, though ghastly accounts slipped through. Initially, the camps were conceived as shelters for women and children war refugees. SHARE. He was just one of the imperial rulers and national figures to be demonized. The turn of the century also witnessed emergence of articulate anti-imperialist voices worldwideand this movement had its own powerful wing of incisive graphic artists. The U.S. policy of benevolent neutrality supported Britain in the Boer War with large war loans, exports of military supplies, and diplomatic assistance for British POWs. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The archetypal dominance of Civilization over Barbarism is conveyed in a 1902Puckgraphic with the sweeping white figure of Britannia leading British soldiers and colonists in the Boer War. At the same time, however, the suppression of The War Prayer helps highlight the courage and critical edge that many political cartoonists brought to the very same subject of spreading death and destruction in the name of civilization and progress. W. H. P. Signs of Promise., Jones, Toby Craig. Looming on the left, the Eastern Question refers to the long-standing British confrontation with Russia in the Balkans that would soon extend to conflict over Britains Cape to Cairo strategy in Africa. In this rendering, progresseconomic, technological, and culturalis spread through global military aggression. What did the public back home know about the fighting of these far-off wars? 8, No. 799820 (June 2000). In the centerfold of the August 16, 1899 issue of Puck, the not-so-cynical Keppler extended his feminization of global power politics to other great nations including a new arrival on the scene: Japan. A poster headlined A Union in the Interest of Humanity Civilization, Freedom and Peace for all Time, probably also dating from 1898, celebrated the rapprochement between the United States and Great Britain with particularly dense detail. The caption, From the Cape to Cairo. The cartoon takes its title from Rudyard Kiplings poem The White Mans Burden. Published in February, 1899 in response to the annexation of the Philippines by the United States, the poem quickly became a famous endorsement of the civilizing missiona battle cry, full of heroic stoicism and self-sacrifice, offering moral justification for U.S. perseverance in its first major and unexpectedly prolonged overseas war. Source: Widener Library, Harvard University. Uncle Sam and his English cousin have the world between them. Here, the United States has ingested Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines. It was feared that the mystical rituals and xenophobic violence of the Yi He Tuan (Boxer) secret society would overwhelm Chinas ineffectual rulers, cast the country into chaos, and hinder the trade and profits anticipated by the great powers. (doi:10.1093/cjip/pol005), Faunce, Rev. Militarily beneath notice by the major European powers, and able to resolve conflicts with Britain in the Western Hemisphere diplomatically, there was little pressure for a strong military in the U.S. With minimal military expenditures, the U.S. economy grew rapidly. Abe Ignacio, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, Helen Toribo. Wasserstrom, Jeffrey. The Philippines are diminished as Only the Stepping-Stone that enables the U.S. to reach the eagerly anticipated China market. Twains most celebrated anti-imperialist essay, To the Person Sitting in Darkness, was published in the February, 1901 issue of theNorth American Review. Periodicals likeLifein the U.S. (predecessor to the later famous weekly of the same title), as well as French and German publications, printed both poignant and outraged visual arguments against the imperialist tide, often with acute sensitivity to its racist underpinnings. Xiang, Lanxin. New Forces in Old China: An Inevitable Awakening(New York: F.H. The enlarged detail below reveals that the flags of the opponents say the same thing in different words, each justifying their wars to uphold the principle of the Golden Rule., Are our teachings, then, in vain? Udo Keppler,Puck, October 3, 1900. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. It ends with a stranger entering the church and delivering a devastating description of the carnage experienced by invaded countries. Source:Bibliothque nationale de France. The image appeared in the June 27, 1901 issue ofLAssiette au Beurreby Steinlen titled, A Vision de Hugo, 18021902. The full mural decries the bloodshed of colonial warfare in Turkey, China, and Africa. In an unprecedented alliance, the second expeditionary force was comprised of (from largest troop size to smallest) Japan, Russia, Great Britain, France, U.S., Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Our Christmas Tree. Udo Keppler,Puck, December 27, 1899. The link between U.S. conquest of the Philippines and the lure of the China market was widely acknowledged at the time, and no one rendered this more vividly, concisely, and admiringly than the cartoonist Emil Flohri. Twitter. In the storm clouds on the left, the Eastern Question looms. The cartoonist targets capitalists as the true power behind the policies and practices in the Pacific, with a portrait of businessman Marcus Hannaa dollar sign elongating his earthat dwarfs a portrait of President William McKinley. Brewer, Susan. President McKinley at the Conference of Foreign Missions. The fallen man clasps the flag of the Philippine independence movement, inscribed with the words Give Us Liberty. His hat quotes the most famous phrase in the U.S. Spencer, David R. No Laughing Matter. Civilization and its Discontents: The Boxers and Luddites as Heroes and Villains., The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, CGACGA, The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University, CGACGA, The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, William H. Walker Cartoon Collection, Princeton University Library, The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library. Ellen Sebring is an artist, filmmaker, and for a decade was the Creative director of theVisualizing Culturesproject at M.I.T. (ISSN 1961-9898). Raising money to Save the Foreign Devils recurs in the visual record. Historical perspective. Take up the White Mans burden The savage wars of peace Fill full the mouth of Famine, And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest (The end for others sought) Watch XII, No. This idea is presented in a poetic way, by a British poet, Rudyard Kipling, in his poem The white mans burden written in 1898. Misery Loves Company: Parallel Colonial Wars (1899-1902). The phrase White Mans An exclamation point was added to the phrase, The White (!) This ca. The The U.S. must govern its new territories with or without their consent until they can govern themselves.. The image exhibits a racist hierarchy that places a dominant white American male in the center, and on the fringes, an African-American washing the windows and Native-American reading a primer upside down. 1900. The laudatory rhetoric and imagery of a white mans burden and civilizing mission received a sharp rejoinder in a cartoon published byLifein April, 1901 under the title March of the Strenuous Civilization. In this sardonic rendering of the realities of imperialist expansion, a missionary leads the charge holding a Missionary Ledger. Immediately behind him march a sword-brandishing sailor carrying loot and a rifle-bearing soldier carrying booty. Science comes next, clutching lyddite, a high explosive first used by the British in the Boer War. John Bull Good evins! All of the hastily organized camps, for whites and blacks alike, had inadequate accommodations, wretched sanitation, and unreliable food supplies, leading to tens of thousands of deaths from disease and starvation. 2 vols. Kipling was a white supremascist and wrote The White Mans Burden urging the United States to take up the burden of civilizing savage peoples alongside other European powers. Europeans had a duty to introduce the benefits of their civilization to non-European peoples is the statement which best expresses the Western perspective regarding Rudyard Kipling's "white And, more subtly yet, it reflected the shift from the nations agrarian roots toward global engagement. The scene above turns the tables on theHarpers Weeklycover (above) and accuses foreign troops and missionaries of atrocities during the Boxer Uprising in China. Dominated by full-page graphics, many issues were thematic visual essays developed by a single artist. Model students Hawaii and Porto Rico appear as docile girls learning their lessons. The following year,Lifecartoonist William H. Walker evoked the horror of the Allied intervention in China in a graphic captioned, Almost thou persuadest me to be a ChristianActs xxvi, 28. A Chinese man falls off his chair, the Bible at his feet, laughing at Uncle Sams duplicity in preaching Christianity while showing a bloody panorama of Allied soldiers executing and marauding on a screen. Columbia Studies in the Social Sciences (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955). Become Member of 62, Issue 4,pp. In these details, the headlight of a modern vehicle (Judge, 1900) and starlight from a goddess of civilization (Puck, 1898) illuminate demeaning caricatures of China. Three overlapping turn-of-the-century conflicts in particular stirred the righteous rhetoric of the white imperialists. If you dont do it I shall have to., The First Duty. In the U.S., pro-imperialist graphics created the image of robotic, unstoppable American soldiers stomping on foreign lands and towering over barefoot savages. Kipling was a white supremascist and wrote The White Mans Burden urging the United States to take up the burden of civilizing savage peoples alongside other European powers. Prisoners will not be taken! Elliott, Jane E. SomeDid It for Civilisation, Some Did It for Their Country: A RevisedView of the Boxer War(Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2002). Mans Burden William H. Walker, cover illustration,Life, March 16, 1899. This early outburst of what we refer to today as clash-of-civilizations thinking did not go unchallenged, however. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (2014). The Native: Ever since my home was burned to the ground and my wife and children shot.. Britain, the more powerful military partner, shows celebrated victories over the Spanish Armada in 1588 and over the French and Spanish navies at Trafalgar in 1805. Cartoons endorsing imperialist expansion depicted a beneficent West as father, teacher, even Santa Clausbearing the gifts of progress to benefit poor, backward, and childlike nations destined to become profitable new markets. 12, Issue 1, pp. After Allied forces were dispatched to relieve the sieges in Tianjin and Beijing, however, it did not take long before news reports and complementary visual commentary began to take note of barbaric conduct on both sides of the conflict. '. No blow has been struck except for liberty and humanity, and none will be.William McKinley. W. A. Rogers,Harpers Weekly, July 28, 1900. William!! [View Extract]. Heine provided Simplicissimus with what has become a justly famous image: an armed knight, representing the West, pours a torrent of blood over Asia, while his sword drips blood on Africa. Miller, Bonnie M. The Image-Makers Arsenal in an Age of War and Empire, 1898 1899: A Cartoon Essay, Featuring the Work of Charles Bartholomew (of theMinneapolis Journal)and Albert Wilbur Steele (of theDenver Post). Journal of American Studies, 45, pp 53-75 (Cambridge University Press). Within a barred room, its walls painted blood-red, a cohort of five army officers headed by a sword-wielding Major General Elwell Stephen Otis (1838-1909), military governor of the Philippines, forces a manacled war correspondent to write only approved dispatches. Bickers, Robert A. and R. G. Tiedemann. Lifepublished many graphics that showed the humanitarian costs inflicted by war and political aggressiondespoliation, looting, concentration camps, torture, and genocideoften awkwardly interspersed amongst humorous sketches and domestic scenes. (This coincided with the annexation of Hawaii as a U.S. territory in congressional votes in June and July of the same year.) 167-165, The American Peace Society, Boston, (December, 1989). Other graphic techniques were used by cartoonists to communicate this message. Do those benighted wretches fail to realize what we have accomplished in their islands? This French cartoon eschews the romantic presentation in the preceding Puckgraphic and casts a far more cynical eye on Anglo-American expansion as fundamentally a matter of conquest. "The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the British Victorian poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling. Embracing Technologies of Domination: The Rise of Popular Imperialism in the U.S., 1898-1904. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Dresden International Congress Centre, Dresden, Germany, Jun 16, 2006. Imperial and Anti-Imperial Constructions of Civilisation: Engagements with Pre-Modern Pasts., Ricard, Serge. The wars undertaken in the name of Civilization and Progress were more savage, tortuous, and contradictory than is often recognized. The strategy was among several emerging in these small wars of the turn of the century. 203228. Cartoonists portrayed Wilhelm II with increasing venom as a perpetrator of violence through World War I. In its final issue for 1899a time when the U.S. suppression of Filipino resistance was at its peakPuck turned to a feel-good holiday graphic to reaffirm this theme of the bounty promised to newly invaded countries and peoples. By the 1890s, the U.S. began to revitalize both its commercial and naval fleets. At the same time, the distinction the artist draws between Britains burden and Americas is striking. Uncle Sam and John Bull, as fellow soldiers, survey the globe from a parapet. nebraska teacher salary by district. This special issue ofLAssiette au Beurredrew particular attention to the brutal tactics adopted by the British in the Boer War, including herding the families of the Boer opponent into concentration camps. She may be red-handed, and at times drunk, but she is there for business. The white man's burden poem was written by Rudyard Kipling. 2. Take up the White Mans burden Ye dare not stoop to less Nor call The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your Gods and you. Analysis The men selected for the task must do it efficiently. Western leaders eagerly embraced the doctrine of the white man's burden because it was a convenient justification for their expansionist policies. The rays of the sun shine over Uncle Sam and John Bull, who clasp hands in a renewed Anglo-American alliance of Kindred Interests rooted in the English Tongue. Warships on the horizon ground their mission in naval power. Commercial interests not only drove U.S. policy in Asia, but also shaped public opinion about it. In the French cartoon Leur rve (Their dream), the globe is portrayed as a victim carried on a stretcher. 5 vols. An Italian cartoonist who drew William II as a modern Attila beheading Chinese foes was likely inspired by his Hun speech to German soldiers shipping out to fight in the Boxer Uprising in China, delivered on July 27, 1900, in which he called for total war: Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated! Native people in the countries that were being colonized did not agree with imperialist policies. In the final years of the Civil War, U.S. naval power was second only to the great seafaring empire of Great Britain. The white mans burden was an example of a justified imperialism argument to liberate the countries that lagged in economic, social, and political development in the 19 th century. The British people had a long history of supporting imperial wars and as the conflict escalated, criticism in cartoon form declined and was supplanted by patriotic messages. Hanna was a wealthy businessman with investments in coal and iron who financed McKinleys 1896 election campaign with record-breaking fundraising that led to the defeat of opponent William Jennings Bryan. In one of the most lasting images of the conflict, the legation quarter in Beijingoverflowing with some 900 foreign diplomats, their families, and soldiers, along with some 2,800 Chinese Christianswas put to siege. Accusations of atrocities against civilians on the ten-day march to Beijing were made in first-hand accounts of the mission. But rivalries for commercial privileges never abated even when an eight-nation Allied military force was forged between the world powers in the summer of 1900. Expansionism promulgated under the banner of civilization could not escape being carried out in global military campaigns, referred to as the savage wars of peace in the third stanza: Such avowed paternalism towards other cultures recast the invasion of their lands as altruistic service to humankind. How such uncivilized behavior fit the rhetoric of the civilizing mission is the subject of theLifecartoon, A Red-Letter Day. Against a backdrop of distant flames, a Filipino mansympathetically drawn as tall, handsome, and heroic in contrast to the usual caricature of a tiny, expressionless savage in a grass skirtis questioned by a clergyman. A cartoon published in May, 1899 over the caption And Peace Shall Rule offered a female angel of peace flying over a globe (turned to Asia and the Pacific) hoisted by John Bull and Uncle Sam. The caption at their feet exclaims United We Stand for Civilization and Peace!, United We Stand for Civilization and Peace! Louis Dalrymple,Puck, June 8, 1898. Pucks caricature of Germanys Bible-quoting Kaiser Wilhelm II ready to machine gun foreign non-believers captures the role of Christianity in turn-of-the-century Western imperialism. That dragon must be killed before our troubles can be adjusted. Uncle Sam is to be Sacrificed: Anglophobia in Late Nineteenth-Century Politics and Culture., Twain, Mark. A pair of 1898 graphics offer before and after snapshots related to two major events. Although these magazines were affiliated with different political partiesthe Democratic Party and Republican Party respectivelyboth generally supported pro-expansionist policies. As the American West was absorbed and the continent consolidated, the mandate of Manifest Destiny shifted from territorial to commercial expansion beyond contiguous borders. Daggett, Aaron Simon. I relegated an escort. The "white man's burden" refers to the duty of Westerners to the rest of the world. Keppler rendered this as Japan Makes her Dbut Under Columbias Auspices, with Columbia, Britannia, and a geisha-like Japan at the center of the scene. Following its victory over China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, Japan had the heady experience of being welcomed into the imperialist circle. There, membership in militant secret societies swelled, most prominently in the Yi He Quan (Society of the Righteous Fist), a sect known to Westerners as the Boxers. 4). All this for politicsis civilization advancing? Victor Gillam,Judge, February 3, 1900. American Imperialism (New York: Arno Press, 1970). Here, perfectly mythologized, is yet another graphic rendering of the mystique of Western civilization., Japan Makes her Dbut Under Columbias Auspices. Udo Keppler,Puck, August 16, 1899. A tiny female China peers at the scene from behind a wall. The aggressive quest for new marketsChinas millions being the most covetedwas justified as part of the benevolent and inevitable spread of progress. One victim of the UK Blair torture regime Fatima Boudchar was actually pregnant when kidnapped along with her husband for rendition. Relatively free from European rivalries and well situated to become a transoceanic partner, the U.S. was courted for the role. Transatlantic dimensions of the American Anti-Imperialist Movement, 1899-1909., Feng, Yongping, The Peaceful Transition of Power from the UK to the US., Faunce, Rev. Anthropomorphizing nations and concepts meant that in an 1899 cartoon captioned The White Mans Burden, the U.S., as Uncle Sam, could be shown trudging after Britains John Bull, his Anglo-Saxon partner, carrying non-white nationsdepicted in grotesque racist caricaturesuphill from the depths of barbarism to the heights of civilization. Our Civilized Heathen asks what is civilized and who are the heathen. Women and children were included among the Boer prisoners of the British. Stark images such as these helped make public a subject that was generally suppressed. Competency (trait) perspective. This was followed by the invasion and takeover of Puerto Rico. Expert Help. 77-99 (2011). England has governed her colonies whether they consented or not. Civilization warns Chinas passive emperor to stop the Anarchy, Murder, and Riot spread by Boxer insurgentsvisualized as a dragon crawling over the city wallattacking missionaries, Chinese Christians, and Westerners. British armies had difficulty stopping mounted Boer commandos spread out over large areas of open terrain. McKinley also mentions profit, free trade, and the open door in Asia: Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial opportunity to which American statesmanship cannot be indifferent. The Battle of Omdurman in September 1898in which British forces retook the Sudan using Maxim machine guns to inflict disproportionate casualties on native Mahdi forceswas followed almost immediately by the Fashoda Crisis with France, in which the British asserted their control of territory around the upper Nile. Contemporary conflicts are spelled out over dark clouds. Here the Auto-Truck of Civilization and Trade shines a headlight upon a raging dragon and sword-wielding Chinese Boxer whose banner reads 400 Million Barbarians. In the imagery of the civilizing mission, China is portrayed as both backward and savage. It was the anti-imperialist cartoonists, however, who most starkly posed the question: who is the real barbarian? A band of tribal defenders, whose leader rides a white charger and wields the flag of Barbarism, fades in the face of Civilizations advance. The Real White Mans Burden was published in 1902, after the Spanish-American war and it is a satire of another poem by British author Rudyard Kipling - The White Mans Burden. However, these came at a huge price for the people of these regions. The caption reads: The Stranger: How long have you been civilized? White Man's Burden: The social, religious and cultural excuses to justify imperialism and gunship diplomacy Posted on March 31, 2014 by JL Admin European imperialism of the last few centuries were heavily centered on the perceived moral responsibility of its leaders toward other supposedly backward regions of the world. A 1901 Puck cover, Misery Loves Company, depicts John Bull and Uncle Sam mired in colonial wars at a steep price: Boer War 16,000,000 yearly and Philippine War $80,000,000 yearly. Anti-imperialist movements targeted the human rights violations in both the Philippines and Transvaal in their protests.

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western leaders perspective on the white man's burden